


To Burn Away the Darkness

by SolarMorrigan



Series: Solar's 007 Fest 2019 [18]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort, Multi, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 06:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19865311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarMorrigan/pseuds/SolarMorrigan
Summary: Perhaps three damaged people in one bed is too many, but James, Madeleine, and Q find they don't much care





	To Burn Away the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Day 18! I said I was gonna take another stab at this! Y'know, like, a year ago... Anyway, this is pretty short, but I kinda like it. Fills "Candles" on the Fluff Prompt Table and takes place in an imagined AU where Bond and Madeleine take Q with them when they leave at the end of SPECTRE (probably in a different car, I don't think the Aston has backseats...)
> 
> Warnings for mentioned torture, murder, and suicide, but nothing graphic

Surprisingly, it was Q who first woke with nightmares (or perhaps not so surprisingly; he’d been fresh from medical when they left, had healed on the road, had buried the aftermath of his capture and beating at the hands of SPECTRE despite Madeleine’s attempts to engage him, had buried the aftermath of his first kill despite James’ attempts to bring it up in any way – perhaps it wasn’t so surprising at all).

James had turned on the lamp in an attempt to discern what was wrong and Q had reacted almost violently, jerking away with a shout, and though neither James nor Madeleine could begin to guess at why, the light was quickly doused. But the dark was just as bad, leaving Q unable to see his surroundings and James and Madeleine unable to see Q.

It was Madeleine who had the idea to light the scented candles on the dresser – not excellent for visibility, but better than nothing.

Slowly, Q calmed; enough to allow Madeleine to take his hands and soothe her thumbs over his tightly knotted fingers, enough to allow James to slide in behind him and wrap him in his arms and promise to keep him safe. Enough that even if they didn’t all fall back to sleep, they at least relaxed a little more.

Q lit the candles when Madeleine woke with a harsh gasp some time later.

She couldn’t remember quite what she’d been dreaming; there had been snow, or static, the bang of a car ramming into something, or the bang of a gunshot, the sudden and horrible jerk of something falling from her grasp, or of something being lost… James had given her the room to breathe while Q had slipped from the bed and lit the candles on the dresser.

The warm light was soothing, even as it flickered and cast juddering shadows on the walls. When Madeleine could breathe again, she’d laid her head on Q’s chest and listened to his heartbeat, let him play with her hair. James had put his arm around her waist and his comforting presence against her back and kissed her shoulder softly. They had fallen back to sleep eventually, and found when they woke that the candles had guttered out sometime in the night.

They would need more at this rate.

James’ nightmares were the toughest—often resulting in the tensest situations, the most potential violence—but perhaps he’d begun to associate the candles with safety. Comfort. Once they’d been lit, he calmed down more easily, came back to bed more easily. He would never fall back to sleep, but he would sometimes allow Q or Madeleine or both to curl back up with him while he kept watch.

Though it did occur to them that they could simply stop sharing a bed, stop waking one another with their bad dreams, they each dismissed the other when they brought it up. They could sleep any time, they’d say, it wasn’t as though you could oversleep when you had nowhere to be. They would much rather be there to remind one another they were safe and cared for when they woke.

Instead, they kept spare candles in the dresser. Extra matches and lighters were always hanging around. When Q woke terrified that they were going to start breaking his fingers next, remembering the way the man’s body had fallen when Q had taken the shot, even jolted by the explosion that had taken his workplace before he’d met James or Madeleine, they would light candles.

When Madeleine woke to memories of her father’s suicide, of the kidnapping and crashes and explosions that had followed, of the anxiety of having been on the run from everyone for years before any of that had happened, they would light candles.

When James woke with the certainty that he was about to be attacked, with the need to defend himself and his lovers against an intruder that wasn’t there, with shakes and sweats from memories of God only knew what, they would light candles.

Perhaps they didn’t sleep as much as they ought, but they coped. In Madeleine’s personal opinion—never mind professional—they were doing just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on [Tumblr](https://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/186388053328/to-burn-away-the-darkness-james-bond-00swannq)


End file.
